Children’s care home profits ‘should be capped’, MPs told

Accounts published by the biggest private provider of children’s homes in the UK show that it charged councils £575 million in one year for the care and education of looked-after children and those with complex needs. The accounts of Amalfi Midco, which owns CareTech, also show “financial expenses” of £136 million – these are the costs of business borrowing, which suggests 23 per cent of the total paid by councils – and taxpayers – did not go towards the care of a child, instead disappearing into the pockets of Amalfi Midco’s creditors. Councils across the country are rapidly going bust thanks in part to the soaring costs of paying for children’s social care places, 80 per cent of which are now provided by the private sector. The number of children in need of residential care is rising, Hampshire’s director of children’s services, Stuart Pearce, told the Education Select Committee yesterday. He said the fault often lay with “private equity backed organisations that aren’t supporting the growth in supply to meet need”.